IT for business

FACULTY OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Individual Assignment Requirements
Read the case study and answer the following questions:
1) What are the advantages and disadvantages of the new POS system?
2) How will this POS system help the business gain competitive advantages?
3) What are the advantages of having a centralised database?
4) How could this POS system facilitate decision making?
Address the following points:
 Why do point-of-sale systems process business activities more effectively?
 Can the information be tracked manually in an effective manner? Why or why not?
 What types of questions could be answered effectively?
 How could the information be used to better manage the business?
5) Recommend telecommunication options for this POS system
Address the following points:
 Types of networks – LAN, WAN or MAN?
 Types of media? –Wired or wireless technologies? Which types of cables should be used for wired technologies? Which types of wireless technologies?
6) What type of risks does the POS system bring and how to protect the business against the risks?
Address the following points:
 Security
 Privacy
 Confidentiality
Your report will be assessed on the quality of your research and quality of report. Discussion must be relevant to the case study business. Your report is to be in the style of a business report.

Case study — Blooming with Technology
The use of information technology is needed by every industry size and type of business. Small businesses can realize the positive effects through adopting technology. However, small businesses often do not have the resources and expertise of large corporations to implement information technology strategies. However, the benefits of technology for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are just as crucial to business operations and strategy.
Consider Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, located in Colorado. This small nursery was like many other small businesses and garden centers. They used manual registers to track and maintain its inventory as well as determine which products were realizing the most profit. The profits from the nursery were either “negligible” or a loss. They did not have access to useful operational data to effectively manage their business. For example, they did not track or review the margins of individual products. However, they believed that they needed to do something different for their $1M business operation.
Enter a new point-of-sale system (POS) in 2008. The system allowed the owners to track useful business data from the sales transactions immediately at the time of the sale; eliminating the need for tracking sales manually. The system processes and stores data from the sale while updating the inventory as well as compiling a sales history. This eliminates reliance on manual entry of sales transactions and reduction of inventory units for the items sold. POS systems provide much more than a cash register. These systems provide more robust functionality in inputting, tracking, and distributing data to provide useful information to operate and manage the business.
Accurate inventory data maintained by the POS helped with decision making. Decisions on how many units of a product to order were no longer based on speculation about current inventory units. Now, accurate inventory counts eliminate the guesswork on how much to order, helping the business to operate on leaner inventory units. The system’s reporting can provide the detail transactions for an inventory item, such as how many were purchased, discarded, and sold.
The implementation of a POS system also confirmed that the owners did not know as much about their business as they thought they did. As they reviewed reports from the new system, they saw that some products were less profitable than they thought. The more detailed cost reporting by item helped them to understand which products contributed the most profit to the operation. Their new perspective of the “real costs” provided the opportunity to shift production to the higher-profit items, thereby gaining more profit. Prior to implementing the POS system, they simply did not have the time to approach this level of decision making.
Knowledge of their detailed product costs helps them to price products more profitably. Price changes can be implemented temporarily (for a promotion) or permanently and still remain within acceptable product margins. The accurate and timely reporting of this information assists them to be more effective managers of their business operations. The ability of the system to process sales, inventory, and purchasing transactions immediately reduces the need for data entry of paper information. The time savings can be used for managing the business rather than mundane clerical functions.
The new system has expanded Four Seasons’ management control over employee schedules to review and allocate labour expenses to specific departments and functions. An additional benefit allows the owners to delegate more responsibility to the staff and establish accountability. Instead of the owners establishing goals, they provide the
HC1041 IT for Business – Trimester 1 2018
system’s data and ask staff to submit their sales goals for the next reporting period. Ultimately, the information technology system creates a solid infrastructure to process and report the businesses operations for the entire enterprise.
The garden centre is an excellent example of how technology can realize benefits for a business. The ability for organizations to remain competitive and agile is crucial. These systems allow organizations large and small to leverage business data to gain a competitive advantage and operational efficiency.
Source: Jones, R. (2011, May). Garden Center 2.0. Today’s Garden Center, 8, 14-16.

Sample Solution

Alanazi, A. F. (2012). Emergency helpful organizations in Saudi Arabia: An examination on the immensity of paramedics and their experiences on blocks as inhibitors of their adequacy. Worldwide Journa of Applied Basic Medical Research, 34-37. Kalaf, H., AlMesned, A., Soomro, T., Lasheen, W., Ewid, M., and Al-Mohaimeed, A. A. (2016). Cardiovascular disease risk profile among young Saudi women of Al-Qassim, Saudi Arabia: A cross-sectional examination. Worldwide Journal of Health Sciences, 29– 37. Kobusingye, O. C., Hyder, A. A., Bishai, D., Joshipura, M., Hicks, R. E., and Mock, C. (2006). Sickness Control Priorities in Developing Countries. second form. New York: Oxford University Press. Mebazaa, A., Yilmaz, M. B., Levy, P., Ponikowski, P., Peacock, W. F., Laribi, S., . . . Filippatos, G. (2015). Recommendations on pre-center and early recuperating office organization of extraordinary heart disillusionment: an assention paper from the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology, the European Society of Emergency Medicine and the Society of Academic Emergenc. European Journal of Heart Failure, 544-558. Meyer, K. A., Decker, K., Mervis, C. A., Louder, D., Bradshaw, J., DeVader, S., and Wigand, D. (2008). Emergency Medical Services Data for Cardiovascular Disease Surveillance, Program Planning, and Evaluation in Maine. Thwarting Chronic Disease, A54. Ponikowski, P., Anker, S. D., AlHabib, K. F., Cowie, M. R., Force, T. L., Hu, S., . . . Filippatos, G. (2014). Heart dissatisfaction: foreseeing contamination and going the world over. ESC Hear Failure, 4-25. World Health Organization. (2014). Saudi Arabia - Noncommunicable Diseases (NCD) Country Profiles. Geneva: W.H.O. Nursing - Factors Affecting Job Satisfaction of School Nurses Choose the parts of school sustain in Bahrain, the levels of business satisfaction among school support in Bahrain and the association between Job satisfaction freedom and occupation practicality. According to Lightfoot and Bines (2000), there is little research concerning the nursing bringing in schools. The little research available is revolved around investigating the piece of restorative overseers in schools. In this way, this examination will offer groups of new information concerning the theme. School nursing program is a basic piece of Public Health Directorate in Bahrain. It is responsible for giving first line remedial help to understudies and staff people, and ensuring they are in perfect prosperity and in a secured and strong condition, which develops effective learning (Schainker et al. 2005; Taras et al. 2004; Wolfe 2006; Wolfe and Selekman 2002). School support in Bahrain are under Public Health Directorate, and their perceptions on parts, factors impacting work satisfaction and the association between work satisfaction, freedom and self-reasonability have basic sense of duty regarding the difference in Nursing Services in Public Health. Factors Affecting Job Satisfaction of School Nurses This examination finds school restorative guardians understand work satisfaction to mean notions of rapture, fulfillment and bliss procured from playing out your action. It is a best human resource issue transversely finished various affiliations associated with positive work attitude, work duty, higher productivity and occupation upkeep (Okan and Akyuz, 2015; Roethlisberger and Dickson, 1939). Diverse examinations (Butler and Rose, 2011; Hegney et al., 2006; Williams, 2014) find school orderlies have low levels of work satisfaction related with less certified drugs and helpful equipment. In any case, in Bahrain, the present examination finds both government and educational cost based school restorative chaperons have general a lot of work satisfaction (Mean=3.80) with non-state funded school therapeutic orderlies uncovering more raised measures of occupation satisfaction (Mean=3.97 versus 3.57). School sustain in Bahrain relate their movement satisfaction to characteristic, incidental and individual factors as cleared up in the accompanying two sections. Examination of the depictions of the Self in TWO of the before the war compositions In the area entitled "Me", Bennett and Royle examine the possibility of Self in composing and academic theory, raising indispensable issues, for instance, the penchant toward solipsism in wistful composition, the way that the "I" or "me" is by and large chosen, that one is at risk to lingo, and that nostalgic and post-nostalgic written work is sensitive to the piece of otherness, making us "aware of what might be portrayed as our commitments in association with otherness" (136). Make an examination out of the depictions of the Self in TWO of the prewar compositions we have thought about as of not long ago. Suggest no short of what one of the issues raised by Bennett and Royle in the beforehand said segment. Note that you don't have to limit your choice to insightful messages including a first-singular storyteller/wonderful voice. Form 1200 to 1500 words (references and works refered to included). Use the MLA reference style. Works that should be refered to are the going with: Walt Whitman. "Song of Myself" (fragments 1-24, 33, 51, and 52; verse, ca. 45 pages) Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Certainty" (paper, ca. 25 pages) Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle. An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory, Fifth Edition (2016). Picked parts are; "Me", and "The substance and the world" The certainty and the reference book about composing will be given in a pdf orchestrate however Song of Myself can be found here with the particular regions here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ditties/45477/tune of-myself-1892-version Page numbers can be found here: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/48060>